Cycode Pricing Explained: Developer Counts, AI Usage and What to Ask Before You Buy (2026)

If you search for Cycode pricing you will find a pricing page with no prices on it. That is normal for enterprise application security platforms, and it is not a flaw. It does mean the real work happens in a quote conversation, and buyers who walk in without a sizing model tend to accept whatever shape of quote they are handed. This guide explains what Cycode publishes as of 28 October 2026, what the two meters it names (active developer count and AI usage) probably mean in practice, how to build a sizing worksheet before you talk to anyone, and what to ask so the quote is comparable to a competitor's.

We do not quote any Cycode price, because Cycode does not publish one and we will not guess. Where this guide describes how Safeguard is priced, it points to the live page at safeguard.sh/pricing for current plans rather than printing figures. The aim is to leave you better prepared for either vendor's sales team.

Every Cycode fact comes from Cycode's own public pages and press releases, read on 28 October 2026. Cycode's technical documentation is behind a sign-in, so contract and metering details that would live there are framed as questions. For the product comparison itself, the companion post Cycode vs Safeguard covers capabilities.

Key takeaways

• Cycode publishes packaging, not prices. The pricing page lists six packaging lines and sends every one of them to a form for a demo. It states that "Pricing is based on your active developer count and AI usage."
• Two meters, both of which you should define in writing. "Active developer" and "AI usage" are not defined on the public page. A quote that does not define them cannot be compared with another.
• Some of the packaging is labeled Preview. The plan listings on Cycode's pricing page mark Cycode AI as Preview in several packages. Ask what that means for support, service levels and price protection.
• The cheapest quote is not always the lowest cost. Cost includes the tools you retire, the tools you keep, integration work, and the hours your engineers spend turning findings into changes.
• Build the sizing model first. A worksheet with developer counts by definition, repositories, scanners to keep, and AI features you will use takes an afternoon and changes the negotiation.
• Compare outcomes across vendors. Per-developer pricing, usage-based pricing and bundle pricing measure different things, so line them up by what you get done, not by the unit price.
• There is a trial path, but terms are not on the page. A Free Trial link appears in Cycode's navigation, and the demo form says nothing about trial terms. Ask for them in writing.

What Cycode publishes, as of 28 October 2026

The pricing page is short. Here is what it shows, in the order it shows it.

Three facts stand out.

First, the page shows no unit rates, tier thresholds or discounts. Each plan leads to a "Get Pricing" or "Get a demo" button. The demo form we read asks only for a work email and a consent to be contacted, and the page text refers to a 45 minute live product demo.

Second, the pricing basis is given in one sentence: "Pricing is based on your active developer count and AI usage." That tells you the two things a quote will multiply, and it tells you nothing about how either is counted.

Third, the packages are modular. ADLC Security, Code Security, Software Supply Chain Security and Posture Management can each be bought on their own, and Cycode Complete combines all four with a version of the AI layer called Cycode AI Pro. That means two questions you can ask before anything else: which packages cover the capabilities you actually plan to turn on in year one, and what is the incremental cost of the others.

Two more details are useful context, both dated and both from Cycode. A May 2023 press release said Cycode was available on the AWS, GCP and Microsoft Azure marketplaces. It did not describe private offers or committed spend drawdown, so if you want to buy through a cloud marketplace and burn down a commitment, ask whether that route is available today. And the Free Trial link in the navigation is not explained on the pricing page, so treat trial scope as an open question.

Reading the packaging: what each line is for

Knowing what each package is meant to cover helps you decide which you need. The descriptions below come from Cycode's own product pages.

Code Security

The core scanning bundle: SAST, SCA, container security and IaC. Cycode's SAST page says its engine supports "Java, C#, JavaScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Go, and many more." The SCA page lists reachability analysis, SBOM generation in SPDX or CycloneDX, license risk identification and "one-click remediation via PR suggestions, CLI insights, and IDE integrations." The container page describes scanning images and tracing vulnerabilities back to code, and the IaC page names Kubernetes, Terraform, CloudFormation and ARM. If you are buying Cycode to replace a SAST and SCA stack, this is the line to price carefully.

Software Supply Chain Security

Secrets and non-human identity detection, CI/CD security, build runtime protection, code leak detection and SBOM. Cycode's secrets page describes checking whether supported secret types are still live, scanning git history, CI logs and container images, and finding secrets in Slack, Jira and Confluence. Its CI/CD pages describe an eBPF-based runtime monitor for builds, a pipeline inventory and an audit of repository access.

Posture Management

This is the ASPM layer proper. It is the line that carries the connectors (the pricing page says 120+, while the integrations page says 140+ and the navigation says 100+), the no-code automation, the custom dashboards and the compliance posture views. Cycode's ASPM page says the platform handles "the ingestion and normalization of findings from thousands of repositories and diverse security tools." If your goal is a single view across scanners you already own, this is the package that does that job, and it is the one where the connector list you need matters most.

ADLC Security

ADLC stands for the agentic development lifecycle, and the March 2026 release describes AI visibility, governance and real-time guardrails for coding agents. The workstation protection page describes install-time interception of npm and pip packages, with release-age cooldowns deployed through MDM. If governing the AI coding assistants your developers use is the main reason you are shopping, this is the line. It is also the newest, so ask for references and a maturity statement.

Cycode AI and Cycode AI Pro

The AI layer carries Maestro and the AI teammates: Graph, CVE, Exploitability, Remediation and Repository agents on the Maestro page. The pricing page says it has usage-based tiers. It also appears as "Cycode AI (Preview)" inside four of the other lines and as "Cycode AI Pro" inside Cycode Complete. We read that as the entry level of the AI layer being included in each package in preview form, and the Pro level being included in the Complete bundle, but the page does not spell this out, so ask.

The first meter: "active developer count"

This one sentence on the pricing page will drive most of the quote, so define it before you receive a number.

An active developer sounds simple. In a real organization it is not. Here are the counting choices that can move the number by a large factor, none of which the public page settles.

1. The activity window. Is a developer active if they committed in the last 30 days, 90 days or 12 months? A 12 month window counts people who left or moved teams.
2. What counts as activity. A commit? A pull request? A login? A review comment? A person who only reviews pull requests may or may not count.
3. How identities are merged. The same person may appear under a work email, a personal email, a bot-signed commit and a squash merge author. Does the vendor deduplicate by SSO identity, by email or by source control user?
4. Bots and service accounts. Do dependency update bots, release automation and CI service accounts count?
5. Contractors and external contributors. Do they count, and if they push to forks or to a vendor-owned repository, do they count?
6. Which repositories are in scope. If you connect only a subset of repositories, does the count follow only the people who touch that subset?
7. When the count is taken. Is it a point in time at signing, an average over the term, or a peak? Is there a true-up and at what rate?
8. What counts across packages. If you buy Code Security for 400 developers and Posture Management for 600, is the same person counted once?

Each of these is an ordinary contract question. Put them in your request for quote and ask for the vendor's written definition. A reasonable ask is the definition in the order form itself, not in a sales email.

A quick way to estimate your own count

You can do this before any call, and doing it will tell you how wide your range is.

• Export distinct commit authors by SSO identity for the last 90 days from your source control system.
• Remove known bots and service accounts, and keep a separate list of them.
• Add reviewers who do not commit, if the package you are considering plans to give them a seat.
• Add contractors who have write access.
• Run the same export for 30 days and for 12 months.

You will have three numbers: a floor, a likely value and a ceiling. If the quote is a high multiple of your floor and a low multiple of your ceiling, you know where the vendor's definition probably sits.

Cycode's own command line tool can help in one small way. The Cycode CLI is published under an MIT license, requires Python 3.10 or later, and supports secret, IAC, SCA and SAST scan types. It does not count developers, but it is an easy way to try the scanners on a few repositories before anyone sizes anything. Ask what the trial path is for the hosted platform, since the CLI needs authentication to the service.

The second meter: "AI usage"

"AI usage" is the vaguer of the two. As of 28 October 2026 Cycode's public pages do not say what unit is counted. Possible units, none of which we can confirm, include the number of AI agent runs, the number of findings the AI analyzes, tokens consumed, fix suggestions generated, seats that use the AI assistant, or a flat tier per organization. The pricing page says the AI layer has "usage-based tiers," so a tier structure probably exists.

What to ask:

1. What exactly is counted: agent invocations, analyzed findings, generated fixes, tokens, questions asked of the Graph Agent?
2. Is the count per organization, per repository, per developer or per user of the AI?
3. What happens when you pass a tier: a hard stop, a throttle, an overage charge, or a forced upgrade?
4. Are the AI teammates that run on a schedule (for example, continuous exploitability analysis on every new finding) counted differently from on-demand use?
5. Is the use of AI features for scanning counted separately from the use of AI features for chat and queries?
6. Is there a usage dashboard, and can you export it?
7. Does the Preview label affect the meter, for example free during preview, then billed later? If so, when does the preview end and what is the rate afterwards?

The last question matters most. Preview features often start as included and become priced. Cycode's pricing page labels Cycode AI as Preview in four of the six lines, and its 21 October 2025 release said its AI and ML inventory was in early access at that time. Both are labels Cycode itself uses. Get the end of preview and the post-preview pricing in writing.

Where the AI claims should be tested before you pay for them

Because AI usage is a priced meter, the claims attached to it deserve a test, not a quote. Some of what Cycode says publicly:

• The ASPM page claims to "Reduce the noise for your developers by up to 90%."
• Cycode's llms-info page reports self-described metrics: 94% fewer false positives on SAST citing OWASP benchmarks, and 17x higher 90-day close rates for critical and high findings when AI fixes are used, with enterprise coverage of 160,000+ repositories in days. Cycode words the 17x figure as a correlation with adoption, not a proven cause.

These are the vendor's figures, with no methodology on the pages we read. They are not suspect for being the vendor's, because every vendor does this, but they are not evidence yet. A fair way to turn them into evidence is to make the trial measure the same thing on your code: false positives on a labeled sample, the share of AI fixes merged, and the time from finding to merge, with the same measurements for any competitor in the bake-off.

A sizing worksheet you can fill in before the first call

This is the single most useful thing in this guide. Fill it in, then use it for every vendor.

Section A: people and code

Section B: tools today

Section C: capabilities you will switch on in year one

Section D: the quote

Fill Section D identically for every vendor you talk to, including Cycode. The sheet forces the conversation into the shape you need.

Costs that do not appear in the list price

A quote is a number for a product. Your cost is a larger number. Here is where the difference tends to hide.

Tools you retire and tools you keep

The case for any consolidating platform rests on the tools it lets you stop paying for. Cycode's connector directory lists scanners from other vendors, including SAST, SCA and DAST tools, which tells you that part of its design is to sit above tools you keep. That is useful, and it also means that the savings from buying a platform depend on what you actually switch off. Write down which scanners you will turn off in year one and when their renewals fall. A platform that adds a layer without retiring anything adds cost.

Integration and data work

A graph depends on connectors, ownership data and consistent repository naming. Plan engineer time for connecting source control, CI, ticketing, cloud and any scanner you keep, and for cleaning ownership metadata. Cycode's integrations page lists Jira, ServiceNow, PagerDuty, Slack and Teams among others. The work is not in turning on a connector, it is in deciding who owns a service when no one has written it down.

Deployment model

Cycode's trust page states SaaS with EU or US data residency and on-premises delivery through Cycode Enterprise Server. If you need the on-premises option, ask whether it is priced differently, who operates it, what infrastructure it requires and how upgrades are delivered. Self-hosted software has a run cost that SaaS does not.

Remediation labor

The largest cost in most security programs is the engineering time to apply fixes, not the license. A tool that finds well and does not help fix leaves that cost unchanged. When you compare vendors, measure the hours from finding to merged change on your own code, and multiply by what an engineering hour costs you. That figure often dwarfs the difference between two quotes, and it is where the choice between a prioritization layer and a remediation engine shows up in money.

Preview and roadmap risk

If a feature that matters to your decision is labeled Preview, put what you need in the contract as a commitment, or treat it as a bonus and decide on the generally available features alone.

Renewal and expansion

A good first-year price with a steep renewal is common. Ask for a cap on annual increases, for the right to reduce the developer count at renewal, and for the AI meter's tier structure to be fixed for the term.

Questions to ask in the quote conversation

Use this list in the first call and again in writing.

Scope and packaging

1. Which packages and features are included in this quote, and which are Preview?
2. What is the incremental price of each package we did not select?
3. Which connectors do we need, and are all of them generally available today?
4. Does the quote include all deployment models we need, including on-premises?

Metering

5. What is your written definition of an active developer, and where does it appear in the order form?
6. Over what window, and how are bots, contractors and duplicate identities handled?
7. When is the count taken, and how does the true-up work?
8. What is the AI usage unit, what are the tiers, and what happens when we cross one?
9. What does preview pricing become when preview ends?

Commercial terms

10. What is price protection for years two and three?
11. Can we reduce the developer count at renewal?
12. Can we buy through our cloud marketplace and use committed spend?
13. What is included in onboarding and support, and what is billed as services?
14. What are the termination and data export terms?

Security and compliance

15. Can we see the SOC 2 Type II report, the ISO 27001 certificate and the CSA STAR attestation that the trust page cites?
16. Which model providers do the AI features use, how is customer code handled when they run, and can we turn them off?
17. Where is our data stored, and can we choose EU or US residency?
18. What does your data processing addendum say about retention and deletion?

How Cycode's model compares with other pricing models

Different vendors meter different things. Understanding the model matters more than the number.

Cycode's public statement places it in the first and last rows: developer count plus AI usage tiers, packaged as modules. That is a reasonable structure. It rewards organizations with a stable, well-defined developer population and a plan for how much AI they will use, and it penalizes ones that cannot yet predict either.

How Safeguard is priced, for comparison

Safeguard's plans are published on safeguard.sh/pricing: see safeguard.sh/pricing for current plans. We do not repeat figures here because they can change. The structure, per the page on 28 October 2026, is useful to compare against Cycode's.

• Every plan carries every feature. The page says "Every plan carries every feature. What changes is how much runs for you." Paid tiers differ in usage rather than in which capabilities are switched on.
• Usage is measured in fix pull requests per month, components scanned per month and REST API calls per month. MCP tool calls are unlimited on every plan.
• Plan names run from Free and Starter through Pro and Team, with team plans priced per user and data isolation beginning at the team tier. Business, Enterprise and Sovereign are scoped per customer, and the enterprise cost depends on reasoning budget, deployment isolation, compliance scope and environment size.
• Portal and TPRM meter on their own units, such as products published or vendors monitored, with a free entry rung.
• Add-ons include compliance framework packs and Safeguard-run audits, confirmed per deal.
• Free programs exist for open source maintainers, nonprofits, students, educators and VC or accelerator backed startups, each with an eligibility form.
• Regional price lists vary by billing country, and data residency follows the region of purchase.

The contrast is structural, not a claim about which is cheaper. Cycode's model counts people and AI usage. Safeguard's counts work done: pull requests opened, components scanned. A team with many developers and a modest dependency footprint might see the two compare one way, and a team with few developers and a very large estate of components might see them compare another way. Run your own numbers through both.

If you want to try Safeguard without a conversation, the free tier and gold.safeguard.sh let you check scanner output against a second source for nothing, and the remediation documentation describes exactly what a pull request contains before you commit to anything.

Fix it without waiting for upstream

Whatever the vulnerability, most of the risk sits in two gaps. The first is the time between a fix being published and that fix actually running in your production builds. The second, and worse, is the time before any fix exists at all, while a maintainer works out a patch and a release schedule. Waiting through both gaps is a habit, not a requirement. Safeguard gives teams three ways to close them.

1. Autonomous remediation: pull requests, not tickets

When a fixed version exists, Griffin, Safeguard's security model, opens a policy gated pull request that moves the affected dependency to the safe version, and your own CI runs your tests on it before anyone merges. You can run it on one repository or in bulk across every project that carries the vulnerable version. Remediation categories include dependencies, licenses, security posture and findings, and each one is set separately. Reachability analysis ranks the vulnerable code paths your application actually calls first, so the first pull requests you merge are the ones that matter most. Auto-merge is a separate switch and stays off by default, so your team decides what merges on its own and what still needs a human approval.

2. Gold Open Source: the safe version in seconds, free

gold.safeguard.sh is free and needs no login. Search any CVE or package to see affected and fixed versions, CVSS, EPSS, CISA KEV status and a recommended safe version, or use the "Am I affected?" checker. The same data is available through a free read API, README status badges and RSS threat feeds.

3. Gold Registry: start from components that are already fixed

Safeguard Gold rebuilds patched versions of open-source packages and images from source, signs each build, attaches an SBOM, SLSA provenance and VEX, and serves them from registry.safeguard.sh to your organization. Every Gold artifact is held continuously to zero exploitable critical or high CVEs and a completed license check, with signed build provenance (signed with Safeguard's key and verifiable with cosign, SLSA Build Level 3 as the design target) and a public evidence page you can hand to an auditor. An artifact loses its Gold badge if it regresses. Teams can point their own package directory at the registry so hardened equivalents resolve without changing how developers install anything.

When upstream has no fix yet, or will not ship one, Safeguard first works to get the fix accepted upstream. If the issue is severe or upstream will not move, Safeguard builds a fork, fixes the vulnerability there and publishes a hardened Gold build, so you are not stuck on a maintainer's release schedule. You can also request a hardened build of a specific package. Ask which packages it covers before you plan around it.

One honest limit: when the vulnerable code lives in a vendor appliance, a hosted service or an operating system runtime you do not build yourself, the fix still has to come from that vendor or distribution. The steps above apply to the open source dependencies and container images you build and ship, which is where most teams carry the largest and least tracked share of their exposure.

When Cycode's pricing model fits

Cycode's structure is a good fit when most of these are true:

• Your developer population is stable and you can count it by a definition you trust.
• You want a posture layer across several scanners you will keep, and the connector list covers your stack.
• You will use several packages together, and the Cycode Complete bundle matches your plan.
• You can predict your AI use, or you are willing to run a trial to measure it.
• You need ISO 27001 certification and a SOC 2 Type II report from the vendor today, per Cycode's trust page.
• You want on-premises delivery from the same vendor as the SaaS option.

When Safeguard's pricing model fits

Safeguard's structure is a good fit when most of these are true:

• You would like to pay for work done (fix pull requests, components scanned) rather than for headcount.
• You want every capability available on every plan, with usage as the only dial.
• You want to start small, with a free entry and published plans, and grow.
• You need a fix path for dependencies and containers, including when upstream has no fix.
• You need deployment options from SaaS to air-gapped, a local runner, or Zero AI mode with no language model.
• You want SOC 2 Type I and Type II audited posture from a vendor, with a trust page you can read before talking to anyone.

A pricing comparison checklist

Use this over two to three weeks when you compare Cycode with any other vendor.

Preparation

1. Fill in the sizing worksheet above, including three developer counts.
2. List the scanners you will retire, and the renewal dates.
3. Write the capabilities you will switch on in year one.
4. Decide your pass criteria and your budget range before any demo.

Quote collection

5. Send the same written request to each vendor, with your three developer counts and the question list above.
6. Ask each for the written definition of its meter.
7. Ask for a quote in the same shape: year one, years two and three, true-up, overage.
8. Ask which features are Preview and what changes when preview ends.

Trial

9. Pick six to eight repositories, including a monorepo and an unfixed vulnerability.
10. Measure true positives, false positives and time to merge on each tool.
11. Measure the AI features on the same repositories and record how much of the AI meter they consumed, if the vendor exposes it.
12. Ask each vendor for the exit plan and a data export in a sandbox.

Decision

13. Convert each quote into a total cost: license, retired tools, integration hours, remediation hours.
14. Check the compliance documents you need are in hand.
15. Check the contract for price protection, renewal caps, preview terms and data residency.
16. Choose, and put the definitions you negotiated into the order form.

Frequently asked questions

How much does Cycode cost?

Cycode does not publish prices. Its pricing page, read on 28 October 2026, lists six packaging lines and states that "Pricing is based on your active developer count and AI usage," and every plan leads to a demo form. Treat any third-party figure as an estimate and get a written quote.

Does Cycode have a free trial?

A Free Trial link appears in Cycode's navigation, but the pricing page and demo form do not describe trial terms, and the form we read asks only for a work email. Ask for scope, length and limits in writing. The open source Cycode CLI, published under an MIT license, can be used to try scanning on a few repositories.

What counts as an active developer at Cycode?

The public pages do not define it. Ask for the written definition, including the activity window, treatment of bots and contractors, how identities are merged, when the count is taken and how true-ups work.

What is "AI usage" in Cycode's pricing?

Cycode's page names it as a pricing basis and says the AI layer has usage-based tiers, without defining the unit. Ask what is counted, what happens when you pass a tier, and whether preview features become billed later.

Which Cycode packages exist?

The pricing page lists ADLC Security, Code Security, Software Supply Chain Security, Posture Management, Cycode Complete and Cycode AI. Cycode Complete combines the first four with Cycode AI Pro.

Can I buy Cycode through a cloud marketplace?

A May 2023 Cycode press release said it was available on the AWS, GCP and Microsoft Azure marketplaces. It did not describe private offers or committed spend. Ask whether your cloud commitment can be used today.

Is Cycode SOC 2 audited, and does it hold ISO 27001?

Cycode's trust page states that it has completed a full third-party SOC 2 Type II audit, is ISO 27001 certified by a third party and has completed a CSA STAR Level 1 attestation. Request the reports under NDA.

How is Safeguard priced?

Safeguard publishes plans at safeguard.sh/pricing, and the page says every plan carries every feature, with usage measured in fix pull requests per month, components scanned per month and REST API calls, and unlimited MCP tool calls. Team plans are per user, and Business, Enterprise and Sovereign are scoped per customer. See safeguard.sh/pricing for current plans.

Is Safeguard SOC 2 audited?

Yes. Safeguard is SOC 2 Type I and Type II audited. We hold no FedRAMP status today. The trust page lists the current status of each framework.

How should I compare a per developer price with a usage-based one?

Compare outcomes. Estimate what you will stop paying for, what the integration work costs, and how many engineering hours turn a finding into a merged change. Then price each vendor against the same sizing worksheet and the same trial results.

Where to go next

• Fill in the sizing worksheet above before you book any demo.
• Read the capability comparison in Cycode vs Safeguard.
• Use the ASPM ROI post and the ASPM vendor questions to ask before you buy to frame the business case.
• See safeguard.sh/pricing for current plans and gold.safeguard.sh for a free second opinion on any scanner's output.

Facts about Cycode in this post were taken from Cycode's public pages and press releases on 28 October 2026 and can change. Cycode is a trademark of its owner, and this post is not affiliated with or endorsed by Cycode.